Ideas are Cheap?

Here’s another post in the vein of “what I’m thinking about this new site and why I’m interested in doing it.” Another excerps from the interview I did with myself.

I hear that ideas are thick on the ground, and follow through isn’t. To the point that I’ve heard people talk about follow through as *the* quality of a writer. What are your thoughts on this?

I’ve stumbled across people (mostly Mur, I guess talk about how ideas (for stories, but all kinds of creative ideas) are thick on the ground, but that the real magic of being a writer is “follow through:” getting ideas into words. Everyone who reads has ideas, pretty much, and it’s easy to say “wouldn’t it be cool to write a story with telepathic goblin-zombies fighting post-singular AIs around titan looking for the ruins of an ancient civilization there, except it’s not on Titan, because Earth got too hot after the sun turned into a red dwarf…” and somewhat harder to actually write the story. Or at least it requires a greater time commitment.

And for some reason, the proposition that ideas are thick on the ground and that all ideas are equal save the energy put into the execution, is, I think, not entirely true.

I for one, am not particularly good coming up with ideas. Aside from just being silly and pulling out “wouldn’t it be nifty if…” scenarios, in the entire time I’ve been writing, which for the purposes of this question is years and years, I’ve come up with like three setups/worlds for stories and like four plots. I might be minimizing slightly, but not much. I almost never come up with new ideas, unless I say to myself “ok, self it’s time to come up with something new,” and even then I get something even vaguely useable.

At the same time I think follow through is incredibly important, so I think the main thrust of the argument is solid, even if it does leave me with a sort of bad taste in my mouth.

On(ward and) Up(ward)!